"Oh, dear, Palmer, don't you realize I know everybody in that town, Absolutely everybody. And anybody I don't know, Pug knows.)' He said after a glum pause, "It's not very satisfactory, is it? I don't see myself as a homewrecker. Especially of a military man serving abroad."
"Look, dear, I don't see myself as a scarlet woman. I've been to church both Sundays since. I don't feel guilty, but I do feel mighty curious, I'll tell you that."
She poured more tea for him. "It must be the war, Palmer.
I don't know. With Hitler bestriding Europe and London burning to the ground, all the old ideas seem, I don't know, NUVIAL or something.
I Mean conpared to what's real at the moment-the swans out in back at Mrs. Murchison's place-those sweet pink lily pads, the rain, the gray cat-the tea, those funny doughy cakes-and you and me. That's as far as I've gotten."
"I didn't tell you why I'm going to Denver."
"No. "There's a buyer for my house. Wants to pay a tremendous price.
I've told you about the house."
"Yes, it sounds heavenly. Do you really want to let it go?"
"I ratite around in it. I've been thinking, and it comes to this.
Most of my friends are in Denver. The house is perfect to live in, to entertain in, to have my children and the grandchildren for visits.
If I had a wife, I wouldn't sell it." He stopped, looking at her now with serious, large brown eyes filled with worried shyness. The look was itself a proposal of marriage. "What do you think, Rhoda?"
-Oh, Palmer! Oh, heavenly days!" Rhoda's eyes brimmed. She was not totally astonished, but the relief was beyond description. This resolved the puzzlement. It had not been a crazy slip, after all, like that foolishness with Kip Tollever, but a grand passion. Grand passions were different.
He said, 'That can't really be news to you. We wouldn't have stayed at Mrs. Murchison's if I hadn't felt this way."
"Well! Oh, my lord. I'm proud and happy that you should think of me like that. Of course I am. But-Palmer!" She swept her hand almost gaily at the photographs on the piano.
"I have friends who've married again in their fifties, Rhoda.
After divorces, some of them, and some are blissfully happy."
Rhoda sighed, dashed her fingers to her eyes, and smiled at him.
"Is it that you want to make an honest woman of me? That's terribly gallant, but unnecessary."
Palmer Kirby leaned forward earnestly, tightening his large loose mouth. "Pug Henry is an admirable man. It didn't happen because you're a bad woman. There was a rift in your marriage before we met.
There had to be."
In a very shaky voice, Rhoda said, "Before I ever knew him, Pug was a Navy fullback. I saw him play in two Army-Navy games. I had a boyfriend who loved those games-let me talk, Palmer, maybe I'll collect myself. He was an aggressive, exciting player, this husky little fellow darting all over the field. Then, my stars, he BURST on me in Washington. The actual Pug Henry, whose picture had been in the papers and all that. The war was on. He looked dashing in blue and gold, I must say! Well, great heavens, he courted the way he played football.
And he was very funny in those days. Pug has a droll wit, you know, when he bothers to use it.
Well, all the boys I went with were just from the old Washington crowd, all in to the same schools, all cut out by the same cookie cutter, you might say. Pug was something different. He still is. For one thing, he's a very carious Christian, and you can bet that took a lot of getting used to! I mean right from the start it was a complicated thing. I mean it didn't seem to interfere at all with his ROMANCING, if I make myself clear, and yet-well, Pug is altogether unusual and wonderful. I'll always say that. I must bore Pug. I know he loves me, but-the thing is he is so Navy! Why, that man left me standing at my wedding reception, Palmer, for half an hour, while he drove his commanding officer to catch a train back to Norfolk! That's Victor Henry for you. But in twenty-five years-oh dear, now for the very first time I suddenly feel very, very wretched."
Rhoda cried into her handkerchief, her shoulders shaking. He came and sat beside her. When she calmed down, she looked at him and said, "You go along to Denver, but ask yourself this. I've done this to Pug.
Wouldn't you be thinking for ever and a day, if by some wild chance you got what you're asking for, that I'd do it to you? Of course you would. Why not?"
He stood. "I'll keep that appointment in Denver, Rhoda. But I don't think I'll sell the house."
"Oh, sell it! As far as I'm concerned, you go right ahead and sell that house, Palmer. I only think you yourself might regret it one day."
"Good-bye, Rhoda. I'll telephone you from Washington. Sorry I missed Madeline this time. Give her my best." He said, glancing at the photographs'on the piano, "I think your kids would like me. Even that strange Byron fellow."
"How could they fail to? That isn't the problem." She walked with him to the door. He kissed her like a husband going off on a trip.
IEPTEMBERwas crisping the Berlin air and yellowing the leaves when s Pug got back. Compared to London under the blitz, the city looked at peace. Fewer uniforms were in sight, and almost no trucks or tanks.
After beating France, Hitler had partially demobilized to free workers for the farms and factories. His remaining soldiers were not loafing around Berlin. Either they were poised for invasion on the coast, or they garrisoned France and Poland, or they guarded a thin prudent line facing the Soviet Union. Only the air war showed its traces: round blue-gray snouts of flak guns poking above autumn leaves, flaxen-haired German children in a public square gawking at a downed Wellington. The sight of the forlorn British bomber-a twin of F for Freddie-with its red, white, and blue bull's-eye, gave Pug a sad twinge. He tried and failed to see the wrecked gasworks. Scowling Luftwaffe guards and wooden street barriers cordoned off the disaster.
Goering had long ago announced that if a single British bomb ever fell on Berlin, the German people could call him Meyer.
The evidence of Meyer's shortcomings was off limits.
But Pug wondered how many Germans would have gone there anyway to look. These were weird people. In Lisbon, when he boarded the Lufthansa plane, Germany had then and there smitten him: the spotless interior, the heel-clicking steward, the fast service of food and drink, the harsh barking loudspeaker, and his seatmate, a fat be"pectacled blond doctor who clinked wineglasses with him and spoke warmly of the United States and of his sister in Milwaukee. The doctor expressed confidence that America and Germany would always be friends.
Hitler and Roosevelt were equally great men and they both wanted peace.
He deplored the ruthless murder of Berlin civilians by British bombers, as contrasted to the Luftwaffe's strict concentration on military targets. The R.A.F, he pointed out, painted the underside of their planes with a remarkable black varnish that rendered them invisible at night, and constantly changed altitude so that the A.A.
batteries had trouble finding the range. That was how they had sneaked by. But these petty unfair tricks would avail them nothing.
German science would find the answer in a week or two. The war was really over and won. The Luftwaffe was invincible. The British criminals responsible for dropping bombs on women and little children would soon have to face the bar of ustice.
This man was exactly like a London music-hall burlesque German, complete to the squinting smile and the rolls of fat on his neck. Pug got tired of him. He said dryly that he had just come from London and that the Luftwaffe was getting beaten over England. The man at once froze, turned his back on Pug, and ostentatiously flourished an Italian newspaper with lurid pictures of London on fire.
Then when Pug first returned to the Grunewald house, the art museum director who lived next door, a vastly learned little dark man named Dr. Baltzer, rushed over, dragging a game leg, to offer his neighbor a drink and to chat about the imminent British collapse.
Besides being obliging neighbors, the Baltzers had invited the Henrys to many interesting ex
hibitions and parties. Mrs. Baltzer had become Rhoda's closest German friend. Tactfully, Pug tried to tell his neighbor that the war wasn't going quite the way Goebbels's newspapers and broadcasters pictured it. At the first hint that the R.A.F was holding its own, the little art expert bristled and went limping out, forgetting his offer to give Pug a drink. And this was a man who had hinted many times that the Nazis were vulgar ruffians and that Hitler was a calamity.
This was what now made Berlin completely intolerable. The Germans had balled themselves into one tight fist. The little tramp had his one Reich, one people, one leader," that he had so long screeched for.
Victor Henry, a man of discipline, understood and admired the stiff obedient efficiency of these people, but their mindless shutting out of facts disgusted him. It was not only stupid, not only shameless; it was bad warmaking. The "estimate of the situation"-a phrase borrowed by the Navy from Prussian military doctrine-had to start from the facts.
When Ernst Grohke telephoned to invite him to lunch shortly after His return, he accepted gladly. Grohke was one of the few German military men he knew who seemed to retain some common sense amid the Nazi delirium. In a restauraiat crowded with uniformed Party officials and high military brass, the submariner griped openly about the war, especially the way Gijring had botched the Battle of Britain. From time to time he narrowed his eyes and glanced over one shoulder and the other, an automatic gesture in Germany when talking war or politics.
"We'll still win," he said. "They'll try all the dumb alternatives and then they'll get around to it."
"To what?" Pug said.
'Blockade, of course. The old English weapon turned against them.
They can't blockade us. We've got the whole European coast open from the Baltic all the way around to Turkey. Even Napoleon never had that.
But England's got a negative balance of food and fuel that has to choke her to death. If Goering had just knocked out harbors this summer and sunk sbi, -adding that to the tremendous score our U-boats and magnetic mines have been piling up-England would already be making aproaches through the Swiss and the Swedes." He calmly lifted both hands upward. "No alternative! We're sinking them all across the Atlantic. They don't have the strength to convoy. If they did, our new tactics and torpedoes would still lick them. Mind you, we started way under strength on U-boats, Victor. But finally denitz convinced Raeder, and Raeder convinced the Fuhrer. After Poland, when England turned down the peace offer, we started laying keels by the dozens.
They begin coming off the ways next January. An improved type, a beauty. Then-four, five months, half a milliod tons sunk a month, and phfffi-Churchill kaput.
You disagree?" Grohke grinned at him. The small U-boat man wore a well-tailored purplish tweed suit and a clashing yellow bow tie. His face glowed with sunburned, confident good health. "Come on. You don't have to sympathize. We all know your President's sentiments, hen? But you understand the sea and you know the situation."
Pug regarded Grohke wryly. He rather agreed with this estimate.
"Well, if Goering really will switch to blockade, and if you do have a big new fleet of 'em coming along-but that's a couple of big if's."
"You doubt my word?"
"I wouldn't blame you for expanding a bit."
"You're all right, Victor." Grohke laughed. "Goddamn. But I don't have to expand. You'll see, beginning in January."
"Then it may get down to whether we come in."
The U-boat man stopped laughing. 'Yes. That's the question. But now your President sneaks a few old airplanes and ships to England, and he can't even face your Congress with that. Do you think your people will go for sending out American warships to be sunk by U-boats?
Roosevelt is a tough guy, but he is afraid of your people."
"Well! Ernst Grohke and Victor Henry! The two sea dogs, deciding the war."
The banker Wolf Steller was bowing over them, thin sandy hair plastered down, cigarette holder sucking out of his smile. "Victor, that is a beautiful new suit. Savile Row?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact."
"Unmistakable. Well, it will be a pleasure to start ordering clothes there again. There are no tailors like the British. I say, how far along are you gentlemen? Come and join us. just a few pleasant chaps at our table."
"No thank you, Herr Steller," Pug said. "I must get back to my office quickly."
"Of course. I say, Ernst, did you tell Captain Henry you're coming to Abendruh this weekend? Victor's an old Abendrub visitor, you know.
By jove! Why don't you come along this time, Victor? Twice lately you've said no, but I'm not proud. You and your old friend Ernst can tell each other big sea lies all weekend! Do say yes. There will be just two or three other spjendid fellows. And some lovely ladies, not all of them attached."
Under Victor Henry's quick glance, Grohke smiled unnaturally and said, "Well, that's not a bad idea, is it?"
"All right," said the American. It was quite clear to him now what was going on and why Grohke had called him. "Thank you very much."
"Grand. Ripping. See you on Friday," said the banker, clapping Victor Henry on the shoulder.
After this, the talk of the two naval officers was lame and sparse.
Ernst Grohke busied himself with his food, not looking much at Pug.
That same afternoon, to Victor Henry's surprise, his yeoman rang him and said Natalie Jastrow was on the line from Siena.
"Jehosephat! Put her on."
"Hello? Hello? What happened? I was calling Captain Henry in Berlin." The girl's voice was muffled and burbling.
"Here I am, Natalie."
"Oh, hello! Is Byron all right?"
"He's fine." -Oh, what a relief!" The interference on the line stopped. Natalie's voice came clear. "I haven't had a single letter from him since I left. I sent a cable and got no answer. I know how impossible the mail is nowadays, but still I've begun to worry."
'Natalie, he hasn't had any letters from you. He wrote me that.
And I'm sure he didn't get your cable. But he's in good shape."
"Why, I've been writing once a week. How aggravating that is! I miss him so. How's he doing in submarine school?" Outside Victor Henry's window, the guard was changing at the chancellery, with rhythmic boot-thumpings and brisk German barks. Natalie's telephone voice stirred an ache in him. The New York accent was different from Pamela's, but it was a young low girlish voice like hers.
'Scraping by, I gather."
Her laugh, too, was much like Pamela's, husky and slightly mocking.
'That sounds right."
"Natalie, he expected you back long before this."
"I know. There were problems, but they're straightening out. Be sure to tell him I'm fine. Siena's quite charming in wartime, and very peaceful.
It's sort of sinking back into the Middle Ages, Byron's got three months to go, hasn't he?"
"He finishes in December, if they don't throw him out sooner."
Again the laugh. "They won't. Briny is actually very sure "footed, you know. I'll be back by December. Please write and tell him that. Maybe a letter from you will get through." "It will. I'll write today."
It was a small gathering at Abendruh, with no staircase slide.
Pug was sorry that Ernst Grohke didn't see the crude elaborate joke, so much to the Teutonic taste. The submariner obviously was ill at ease, and could have used the icebreaker. The other men were a Luftwaffe general and a high official in the foreign ministry, company far above Grohke. The five pretty ladies were not wives. Mrs. Stiller was absent.
Victor Henry sized all this up as an orgy in the making, to get him hat to his surprise, they went to talk about the British. After dinner, somew to a wood-panelled room where musical instruments were ready, and Steller, the Luftwaffe general, the man from the foreign ministry, and a the banker had redheaded lady played quartets. In Pug's previous visits hown no musical skill, but Steller played first violin quite well. The Luftwaffe general, a very tall dark cadaverous man with sic
kly hollow eyes, bowed and swayed over the cello, drawing forth luscious sounds. Pug had seen this man once before, at a distance at Karinhall in full uniform; he had looked far more formidable then than he did now in his dinner jacket and monocle.
The musicians made mistakes, stopped a couple of times, joked stly, and took up the music once more. The foreign ministry man on the second violin, a roly-poly Bavarian with a drooping yellow mustache, was a superb fiddler. It was the best amateur music Pug had ever heard. Grohke sat with the submissiveness of most Germans in the presence of art, drinking a lot of brandy and stifling yawns. After a couple of hours of this, the ladies abruptly said good-night and left.
If there had been a signal, Pug missed it.
"Perhaps we might have a nightcap outside," said the banker to Pug, putting his violin carefully in its case. "The evening is warm.
Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War Page 63
